The Professional Magazine

Idea

Introduction

The Professional Magazine provides a platform for advertisers to promote their products or services to a highly desirable, engaged and loyal readership. We have a print circulation of 10,000 but estimate our combined print and digital publications reach 35,000 professionals across Leeds City Region with content updated daily across web, tablet and mobile.

We offer marketing products such as display advertising, sponsored content, recommended articles and outsourced content creation. We work alongside clients to understand their specific needs, so that we can create bespoke advertising campaigns ensuring the best possible ROI. Our aim is to focus on native advertising as with digital marketing this is the area where we're seeing consistent growth.

We are planning to run a series of conferences designed to bring to life the best of our features through a series of speakers and round-table discussions. Also aligned to these events we would then offer sponsorship opportunities for businesses.

Intended impact

The aim of The Professional is three-fold; to inspire, inform and advise our readers. We do so by telling stories; while there are several other business publications both regionally and nationally, these focus on business news (acquisitions, mergers, appointments, etc) often by just publishing press releases as they are received. At The Professional we stand for something greater, we create inspirational and informative content which has been thoroughly researched and created with our readers in mind.

We want to be a voice for good, to share the success of the business & enterprise scene in the various cities we hope to represent. Our intention is to help professionals reach their aspirations and want more from their own careers rather than dreading the 9-5 and living for the weekend. We want people to enjoy the working environment and be inspired by people they can relate to in their local region.

It could also help marketers by providing a platform for them to share their own stories to an engaged audience which should be receptive to their content. This would give advertisers the credibility and long-term ROI they desire by giving our readership something they actually want rather than try to avoid.

Finally we hope we can inspire our audience to become good storytellers themselves, as they say good storytellers rule the world! They can then use this skill in a range of scenarios from job interviews, to pitches/presentations and networking events.

Substantial accomplishments to date

Firstly after 6 months of in-depth market research including focus groups with our core target customers we created the brand and a framework for the type of content we would include. We have built a small yet ambitious and hard-working team who are passionate about producing high quality content for our readers and amazing marketing campaigns for our client base.

Since then we have published 5 issues of the quarterly print magazine in Leeds City Region distributing 10,000 copies per issue building an estimated readership of over 25,000 professionals. We have also successfully launched our digital platform via web, tablet and mobile with content updated daily. To date we have worked on campaigns with clients such as O2, Vauxhall, East Coast Trains and Jaguar as well as over 40 local businesses.

The campaigns we have put in place have been small in comparison for what we’re looking to achieve, we have received great responses up to now with the majority working on future campaigns with us.

Monetisation strategy

We offer a range of advertising and marketing products via our print/digital publications and we also plan to sell tickets and sponsorship opportunities at our events/conferences. By creating an engaged and desirable readership for advertisers we can supply products such as print adverts, digital ad space, advertorials, sponsored content and outsourced content marketing.

We work on brand awareness campaigns with larger clients (Jaguar, East Coast Trains, Vauxhall etc) where we can provide full-page adverts in our print edition and MPU or Leaderboard Ad space on our digital platforms. However, it is said you are more likely to be in a plane accident than click on a banner ad therefore we want to focus on native advertising methods for our regional clients. This is in the form of advertorial or sponsored content related to our own editorial features via relevant posts and thought leading articles.

By having multiple regional publications (i.e. Leeds City Region, Greater Manchester, etc) we can reach a highly targeted audience and adapt the content for each location. We can grow the business by launching in several cities using a similar model but we can adapt to reflect the culture and environment for each area.

On the back of growing our brand and readership we're looking to run a series of conferences in each city we operate that would align with the quarterly print publications. For instance each of these ½ day conferences would focus on a specific sector we cover (e.g. Creative & Digital, Education & Training etc) and we will have an inspirational speaker from the industry to deliver their story, then a stakeholder in the sector from the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) or other organisation to inform us on the sectors current standing and future plans for growth. Then finally we would have a panel of business leaders working in this area to provide advice and answer questions from the delegates before breaking out into round-table discussions.

Use of proceeds

The proceeds would be used to setup The Professional in our next city Manchester; this would allow us to build a team of freelance writers, recruit a field sales executive and increase our capacity at the head office in Leeds to manage the administration functions. Doing so will really hone the model for launching in new cities allowing us to complete our 5 city/5 year plan with minimal errors and the utmost efficiency.

We would also be able to invest in developing the events/conferences side of the business by putting on our first trial event later this year in the hope of running a series of events throughout 2015 in both Leeds and Manchester. The funds would allow us to host some fantastic speakers as well run the event from a great location such as the new First Direct Arena in Leeds. The funds would also support promotion of these events as they gain traction so we can build a loyal following into 2015.